A failure to resolve

Decision-making at the highest level requires a careful weighing in the balance of a number of factors, many of which may not seem important - and some may even seem irrelevant - from the public point of view.

advertisement

Rasheed Talib

October 31, 2013

ISSUE DATE: October 15, 1981

UPDATED: October 28, 2014 18:23 IST

Decision-making at the highest level requires a careful weighing in the balance of a number of factors, many of which may not seem important - and some may even seem irrelevant - from the public point of view. But in our complex modern world, a chief executive, when dealing with a crisis, must turn over in his mind the entire range of possible repercussions before he opts for a particular course of action.

The classic example of a political executive being intensely briefed before dealing with a major crisis is provided in the extremely well-documented accounts of President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban nuclear missile crisis - which, in 1963, threatened to reduce the world to a huge nuclear waste-heap.

The most detailed, blow-by-blow, tense-moment-by-tense-moment narrative of that unique instance of crisis management is preserved in the biographical account, Kennedy, by his White House speech-writer Theodore Sorensen. But, it is the historian Arthur Schlesinger's brief wrap-up in his A Thousand Days that sums up the exercise in a nutshell:

"In the Executive Committee (the group set up to deal with the crisis) consideration was free, intent and continuous. Discussion ranged widely, as it had to in a situation of such exceptional urgency, novelty and difficulty. When the presence of the President seemed by virtue of the solemnity of his office to have a constraining effect, preliminary meetings were held without him. Every alternative was laid on the table for examination, from living with the missiles to taking them out by surprise attack, from making the issue with Castro to making it with Khrushchev. In effect, the members walked around the problem, inspecting it first from this angle, then from that, viewing it in a variety of perspectives. In the course of the long hours of thinking aloud, hearing new arguments, entertaining new considerations, they almost all found themselves moving from one position to another."

No wonder, the decision eventually taken had an extremely professional quality about it. The most effective and least risky option had been carefully worked out. It was no surprise then that the Soviet leaders were obliged to back down from the nuclear brink despite the resultant loss of face.

Between that and the traditional, off-the-cuff manner of decision-making that most Third World leaders, brought up on traditional mores, prefer - admittedly, in matters far less grave and momentous - there is a difference not so much of degree as of approach. Much in the developing countries, however, will change even as they move out of the traditional and into the contemporary stage of their independent existence and professionalism begins to assert itself.

Mrs Gandhi's failure to resolve the Antulay issue before she left on her tour of the antipodes shows up precisely this lack of decision-making structures in even so sophisticated a country as India. Despite strenuous efforts in that direction, despite the broad-based consultations she held with a number of political colleagues, she was unable to take a timely decision.

While Mrs Gandhi has kept her thoughts closely to herself, her response to those whose views she has elicited provides sufficient clues to their likely drift and direction. The prime minister seems clear in her mind not to seem to oust the Maharashtra chief minister for the reasons suggested in the press or by the Opposition.

That would be to make hostages of almost all her chief ministers, to set a precedent that would amount to accepting that no politician - however clean and even in cases where there is no misuse of office - should be allowed to raise funds for public and charitable causes through the mechanism of a private trust. This practice is too well-entrenched and widespread, both among ruling party and Opposition politicians, to be easily jettisoned.

Antulay's particular fault in the prime minister's eyes lay in the fact that he misled his chief not - it should be noted - on the lesser issue about the premature and unauthorised use of her name. That was a minor indiscretion, committed more from excessive enthusiasm than malice. But Antulay had Mrs Gandhi believe that what he wished to lend her name and support to was a public rather than his private bailiwick.

When Antulay goes - as soon enough he will - it will not be so much for his allegedly immoral or improper conduct as for such practical considerations as the need to shore up the Congress(I)'s image or to keep the administrative momentum from slackening in the state. The prime minister appears convinced that, after all that has happened, Antulay can no longer carry conviction with the bureaucracy or make his administrative writ run.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from